Dustin's 1st Soccer Game

Up until now Dustin has not participated in any organized sports. I'm not sure how he would have been if I started him earlier, but starting him at 5 has been great! He's never really been interested in playing anything. This year he said he wanted to play soccer. So we signed him up at the YMCA. There are 12 kids on his team, 4 of which he knows. The first game was this last Saturday, with a chilly 42 degree temperature. I was really excited to watch him play, which surprised me since I'm not a big sports fan (unless it's like .... ice skating... or ESPN's freestyle on bikes or skateboards, snowboarding sports). I realized that when it's your own child they could be doing anything and you're excited to watch.

He had a blast, in fact he had a perpetual smile on his face. He reminded me of one of those Golden Retriever dogs, running and smiling at us as he chased the ball. He first played goalie, and blocked 3 balls! I think he had the most energy of all the kids out there, because even when they were standing around Dustin was running in circles (this is what we live with on a daily basis, the kid has more energy than should be aloud for one human being).

Daria's Piano Recital

http://s139.photobucket.com/albums/q284/kariejbh/?action=view&current=2006Recitalwindows.flv

Try this and see if it works. Feedback on if it works, if it is slow, choppy etc, would be great. Thanks

Dustin's thoughts of the day..

I finally figured out how to upload a video to the internet, so if I can figure out how to post the link to my blog you will actually be able to watch one of Daria's piano recitals.

Thought of the day from Dustin....

Dustin: "Mom, you know that big drum with the big hole in the back that Miles has?" (Miles is our next door neighbor who is actually in Canada on a mission as we speak, he used to play drums and has one of those nice drum sets)

Mom: "Yes"

Dustin: "Did you know it's for putting all of your dirty clothes in and you can keep them there until it's time to do the wash?"

Mom: speechless of course......I almost couldn't reply I just sat there and laughed. I'll have to tell my neighbors that story.

Second thought of the day from Dustin...
preface: do you ever notice all those white crosses on the sides of roads, intersections, and highways? you know the one's that mark the spot where someone died. Well, Dustin notices these all the time.

Dustin: "MOM! those crosses are just like the one Jesus had!"

Mom: "yes, you're right"

Dustin: "Accept he was ON the cross not under it" (I suppose Dustin thinks the people are buried there. Again, another laugh and then some explaining to him on my part)

Funny treasures

So my quest for sifting through my accumulated junk has been interesting. For the most part it's given me some time to remember some fun memories. Memories seem to be attached to "stuff". Still, I have to laugh at myself, as I sometimes pride myself on being a very organized, not collecting, non-cluttery person. Reality proves me wrong! Well, half way. Yes, I'm quite organized, enough so that even my closet is organized by color. Want to wear a green shirt? No need to filter through all your clothes because all of the green shirts are together. Feeling like a yellow shirt day, look no further.

So with that type of organization, one would ask why do I have a nicely packed file folder full of every paycheck stub I ever earned? Yes, you read it right. I have every stub since I began working 1987. I worked straight for 14 years until I was able to quit and raise Daria. Fortunately I'm in the "if it's not needed, let it go attitude" right now. So I decided to shred them. But before I did, the genealogist in me decided to write my work history. It was easy, because I had all the stubs. It was fun actually. It was fun to see what I first earned in 1987. A whopping $3.35 per hour. Can you imagine! It was fun to reminisce. I never had a job I didn't like. I've always had good work experiences and chalk that up partially to my positive happy go lucky attitude. The greatest job I had was the last one I had which I worked for approximately 10 years at. Loved it but not enough to trade it for raising my children. I remember that every paycheck I felt like a millionaire. For some reason working hard and earning money really helped my self esteem, even at $3.35 an hour. I reminisced through my last job where I started at $7.85 per hour in 1992 (before that I worked there through a temp service) and within 5 years was making $14.60 per hour. I had almost forgot about the double bonus in 1997 because my counterpart and I saved the company money by bringing our container graphics in house. I remember the surprise when I was made manager in 1998, and all those work politics that came with that. But it was fun. I still to this day keep in touch with several of my previous co-workers.

On to other funny things I've held on to all these years. 14 floppie disks. Why? I'm not sure. I wanted to see what was on them before I destroyed them, but it's been so long, I don't even have a floppy drive in the house!!! 2 computers and 1 laptop, and some old junk laptops and not one floppy drive. I call my neighbor friend. They have about 5+ computers (her husband is a computer geek too) and no floppy drives.... oh wait, she ends up finding one on her sons game computer. Thrilled I frolic on over. Floppy drive works of course, but the computer has no USB port, so instead of being able to drop the files onto my external hard drive I have to e-mail them one at a time to myself. Crazy! Funny thing is a lot of the disks were old work disks. You may ask why they were at home, that was because in 2001 I then worked for the same company for a year from home. Files are transferred, disks are destroyed. One less thing taking up space.

Now I feel like I'm making progress. I've made a usable path in the spare bedroom with all this stuff. Now sorting it into piles, e-Bay, Goodwill, Craig's list and maybe some Freecycle. On Thursday I put my first item from my de-junking on e-BAy at 4pm. The item sold by 8pm. Wow! I've sold other things on e-Bay but none went that fast. One item down, who knows how many more to go.

Math, Rude People, and talented young folks.....

Math...

See that neat picture? That's Dustin's math problems he did today. He loves doing math. Because Dustin stays at home with me, I feel I need to provide some schooling for him. So on most days we work on school work, abc's, reading lessons, science, math, stuff like that. He digs it. Today we finished our 15th reading lesson. Today Dustin read "See me eat" and "mad at me". After that we worked on math. I would say he is just where he needs to be for his age, but at the same time he's pretty nifty at math. We like to do drills, like "if you have 3 horses how many legs are there", or "if you have 1 horse and 2 ducks how many do you have? take away the ducks how many do you have?" Sometimes he can do problems in his head and sometimes on his fingers. So that's what we worked on today, only this time he wrote the problems down. I was ready to quit but he wanted to fill the whole page so we continued working with ducks in the pond types of stories using little duck's and pond pictures.

Rude people...

Don't you hate it when you're having a good day and you have a run in with a rude person. I often wonder about people like that. Do they not realize how they behave or what they look like when they behave that way? How can people live such grumpy lives. No don't get me wrong, I know we all have grumpy days. Today at Dustin's gymnastics class I was waiting for the previous class to leave so I could get a good seat. I stood there for a good 10 minutes. Then out of no where this woman just walks right in front of me, at the same time the other seats were coming available, she moves me over and starts situating the chairs. I said "oh, are you sitting here or there?" pointing at the seats, she glared back at me and said in a very snappy voice "I need 4 seats!". Well, what do you say to that? Being the non-confrontational person I am, I just found a different seat in a different row. But that bugged me so much!!!!! It leaves a bad taste in your mouth when people are abrasive. ON Saturday I was at the post office, it was 8:58am, they don't open until 9am. There were about 6 people in front of me. The doors opened and we all filed in. One lady who was at the beginning of the line got out of line to get some forms. No biggy. She then asked the next person in line if she could go up just to get a form because the bins were out of them. This didn't bother me either. So she steps up, the clerk helps her and tells her she can just step aside and fill the form out and that when she is done to just come back up so she doesn't have to go to the back of the line. This didn't bother me either, but it must have bothered the lady next to me. She turned around like a whip and looked me in the eye and said "If she comes back to this spot DON'T let her in". She repeated this twice because I was most likely looking at her with the "I can't believe you are saying this to me" look. I said "Uh, wasn't she in the front of the line anyway?" "NO!" she yelled back. Well I knew she was in the front because I remember looking at her sweat pants. Anyway, the controlling lady moved on to the counter. I looked at the other lady to my right and we both just started laughing. She said "I don't want to be mean today" and I was saying "I don't really care if the lady gets to go before us, she was in line first anyway and we'll all get through". It was crazy, but I left feeling so violated. What made that lady think that I'm that type of person, mean and vindictive? It's just yucky and made me feel a little off that morning. I guess I'll take it as a reminder of how I treat other people.

Talented Young Folks....

So tonight I headed up to the high school for the talent show. My primary reason for going was because one of the girls from church was in it as well as several other youth from our church. I had no idea what to expect. Talent shows when I was in high school were more like what you might see on Napoleon Dynamite. Seriously! life was so simple back then and kind of cheesy. Well, all I can say is WOW!!! I felt like I was in a concert, like a very good concert. These kids are amazing. They could have blown American Idol off the TV, and most of the kids and groups sounded better than some things I've heard on the radio. This is a big talent show. Not everybody can participate. They go through tons of pre-screening and selecting. So the best of the best have been selected to compete. I went with my friend Mary, who works at the high school. We were amazed. There were bands, solos, dancing, guitars, drums. Here are these kids, 16-18 years old doing stuff I've seen professional musicians do on TV or in real life.

So it just struck me.

1.What was I doing at this age? Well I was probably dreaming about being one of those famous music stars.

2. Music really is a universal language and moves so many people to creativity. Tonight was proof of that.

3. Kids seem to be more mature (not logical), but physically and more advanced technologically these days, doing things that we as adults didn't do until we were in our 20's. Well at least that's from my perspective and I'm talking specifically about the talent show.

4. I kept wondering if some music scouts were out in the audience.

5. While I know there are so many negative things about the younger generation these days, it was so neat to see that these kids really are creative and must be spending a lot of time practicing.

6. What is it that separates those of us who wish we could be like that and those that do. I looked at these kids and realized that they just love what they are doing so much they just want everyone to see it.

Anyway, it was a treat. I'm glad I went.

6 Leaf Clover

On Friday the kids were out playing. Daria ran up to me and yelled "Mom! I found a six leaf clover!". I have included the picture of the special clover. I didn't have the heart to tell her that this was actually two clover plants. It was cute anyway.

Today has been a good day.

I took Dustin to Academy Sports to buy him his new soccer shoes and shin guards. I was pleased with myself since I'm back to my cash budget. I was able to get the shoes for $8.99 and socks with shin guards in them for $8.99. Not a bad purchase. I did realize that as strange as it sounds Academy presents the same temptation to me as Target does. Academy has some great casual clothes, and usually for a great price. They had a lot of items on clearance, which would have been a totally good deal. I chose to stick with my budget.

It's still cold here. I can't seem to get warm today. Daria the "hot natured" person actually wore a sweater to school. Amazing.

The only disappointment of today was the tearing down of the thick trees that were across from the elementary school. I just cringe every time I see trees being torn down. The area we live in is heavily wooded, but in such an amazingly fast rate the trees are being bulldozed down to make room for new retail centers. Dustin and I went and took pictures before all of the trees are gone. Had I realized this would bother me so much I would have gone to school for a land conservationist years ago. Last summer my friend Jenni and I drove all around and filmed and took pictures of the area. Even since then it is remarkable how many trees have been torn down.

I just had to take a picture of this mess of wires. I don't know why it cracked me up. I suppose it's because this is what the back of my desk must look like. A tangle of wires. I have never seen such a site on a public utility wire and had to chalk this one up for historical purposes!!!

Idiosyncrasies

The other day my friend Becky tagged me with the subject "idiosyncrasies". After reading hers and almost falling on the floor laughing, I tried to think of my own. Empty thoughts occurred momentarily and I remembered how I mentioned in my last post that I was just too darn serious. Could I be that serious that I don't even have any funny idiosyncrasies to tell on myself? OK, none as funny as Becky's feet, and the rest are probably to embarrassing to tell. But today I thought of two things. Here's to all the world that I'm just as human as the rest of us!

1. Eating before dinner. It never fails, whether I'm making breakfast, lunch, or dinner, the kids can never wait. "Can I have a bite?", "Can I try that?", and with sneaky swift fingers I can often catch them grabbing nibbles here and there. I have no clue why this bothers me. I think there is some unwritten rule of mothers that we think our kids will fill up on the nibbles before the rest of the food even hits the table, and of course who would dare nibble before giving thanks! So here is the idiosyncrasy of it. I of course, being the cook have to try what I'm cooking. Somehow the adult stomach has no problem nibbling right before we sit down to eat before giving thanks. HHHMmm this has given me some "food for thought", I must change my ways and share the nibbles before dinner!

2. Dates. For some reason I collect dates. Well, it's not precisely that I collect dates but I think dates are important so I have a lot of them written down. I have probably listed in my address book the birthdays, and anniversaries of all my friends and family, their spouses and children. I think this is some disorder of my love of genealogy spilling over into everyday life. I used to be fantastic at recognizing birthdays and anniversaries. I truly love my friends to know that I'm thinking of them, on their birthday of course, to celebrate that they are alive and still in my life. But for some reason over the past handful of years I can't seem to get a darn birthday card in the mail and sometimes succeed at e-mailing a quick birthday note. But hey, I know the date. Seriously, if you want to know someone's birth date I've probably got it. In a lot of ways this can be totally useless information. I mean really, unless they are your closest friends are you actually going to send birthday cards for everyone in the family? Yeah right. It's possible that this could be diagnosed as OCD. My plan for combatting this is just simple phone calls to close friends and family.

And there you have just a small insight into the workings of my life!